<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>the forge by epsiloneridani</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26331778">the forge</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/epsiloneridani/pseuds/epsiloneridani'>epsiloneridani</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars: Rebels</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Gen, Umbara Arc (Star Wars: Clone Wars), everything is the same but there's no accelerated aging</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 13:21:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,029</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26331778</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/epsiloneridani/pseuds/epsiloneridani</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“War is in your blood. I studied the art of war, worked to perfect it, but you? You were forged by it.”</p><p>Thrawn’s words stay with her, burning in the back of her mind. Hera wonders, between the silence and the shadows, if he might be right.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>CT-7567 | Rex &amp; Hera Syndulla, Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>100</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the forge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>From fire, rise.</p><p>It’s a mantra, pounding in the back of her mind. The <em>Ghost</em> is quiet; it’s been hours since she called lights-out, and the rest of her crew has long since retired to their bunks. Hera shuffles past their doors, brushing her fingertips along the wall as she goes. It’s cool and solid, and tonight, she needs the reassurance. This is her ship. This is her home.</p><p>This is something she knows.</p><p>The door to Zeb and Ezra’s room is cracked, wedged open by one of Ezra’s helmets. Hera suspects Chopper may have put it there, though she’s not sure why.</p><p>She snorts ruefully. When does Chopper ever need a reason? Maybe he’s hoping one of them will trip on it when they get up and he’ll have the chance to grab a holo and laugh his rusty ass off about it. Vindictive little bucket of bolts.</p><p>She’d die for that droid.</p><p>Hera pries the helmet up and away and moves, as quickly and quietly as she can, to replace it on Ezra’s shelf. The rest of his collection is lined up there. Half of them have been repainted in one way or another by Sabine. The other half he must have tried to redo on his own with her hovering over his shoulder. Hera presses a palm to one of the faceplates. The leftmost lines are shaky and hesitant, a mark of lacking experience and hesitant strokes. The rightmost design is confident and sure: bold and bright.</p><p>Ezra and Sabine created this one together.</p><p>Hera’s heart twists. Her hand falls back to her side. Peace has never been a constant in her life. At least, for all of the war burning in their eyes, Ezra and Sabine have the chance to sit and laugh and smile.</p><p>She’d die for that, too.</p><p>Hera pauses in the door and gives the room one last glance. Ezra snores on, sprawled across Zeb’s chest. Zeb’s arm is wrapped tightly around him, cradling him close. If one of them shifts in the night, rocked by some nightmare shadow, the other will know.</p><p>The other will hold.</p><p>The door hisses shut. Hera carries on.</p><p>She knows before she sets foot in the commons area what she’ll find.</p><p>Rex is seated behind the holo-table, toying with its controls. The surface, usually occupied by game pieces, is populated with troops and tanks. She doesn’t recognize the world he’s selected for this particular simulation: what little surroundings the hologram make visible to her are shrouded by mist. The biome must have an abundance of towering trees: they twist and turn over the tiny troopers in tortuous tendrils.</p><p>“Hera,” Rex says, without looking up. He’s hunched over with his elbows propped on the edge of the table; one hand is clasped inside the other and propped under his chin. He’s in just his bodysuit down to his waist. His chest plating and pauldrons are stacked beside him.</p><p>“Sorry,” Hera says. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”</p><p>Rex flaps a hand in the air like he can bat the notion away. “You’re not,” he says, and still doesn’t look at her. His gaze is locked on the simulation: frozen in time. There are dark circles beneath his eyes. His hair, usually kept shaved close to his skull, is tangled in curls all across his head. Dark scruff shadows his jaw.</p><p>For a moment, in the wan blue glow of the holo-table’s lighting, he seems so much older than his thirty-eight years.</p><p>Hera hesitates a moment, then dares a step closer. This is her ship, her home, and Rex is her friend, but this isn’t the first time she or Kanan has come across him agonizing over an algorithm in the dead of night. Mostly, they just let him be.</p><p>Mostly.</p><p>Rex jerks his head to the seat beside him. Hera takes that as an invitation, or at least a hack at it, and closes the distance. For a beat, they’re silent. The holo-table hums.</p><p>“What’s keeping you up?” Rex asks at last.</p><p>“I could ask you the same thing,” Hera returns.</p><p>Rex snorts. He unlaces his fingers and blows out a breath. “Just thinking,” he says.</p><p>The board is frozen. Closer, she can see the tell-tale bloom of explosions, suffocating the air above the units. “Which battle is this?” Hera asks.</p><p>Rex’s breath catches. His jaw trembles. He leans forward again and grasps the edge of the holo-table. His arms shake. “Not one of ours,” he says, and swallows thickly. There’s a sudden sheen to his eyes. He swipes at them. “Just…old history.”</p><p>The units on the board aren’t stormtroopers. They’re clones. Hera narrows her eyes. “And you’re hoping to learn something from it?”</p><p>Rex coughs a wry laugh and doesn’t answer.</p><p>Hera sets a gentle hand on his shoulder. “There’s no point in tormenting yourself over something you can’t change,” she says. “What’s done is done.”</p><p>Rex presses his hand to hers for a moment, then shrugs the touch away. “I know,” he says, and clears his throat roughly. “I know.”</p><p>“If you really believed that, you wouldn’t be up right now.”</p><p>“Those are bold words coming from someone who’s <em>also</em> up right now,” Rex says, and quirks an eyebrow at her. There’s a spark of light back in his eyes. Just a spark. It doesn’t last long. “What’s going on?”</p><p>If she had words for that, she wouldn’t have spent the last four hours prowling her ship: scaling ladders and shimmying through maintenance conduits to check and double-check that everything was in working order. The <em>Ghost</em> sings like an old friend: a solace for her storm-wracked soul. She accepts its shelter without question. Kanan will miss her presence at his side and rise to kneel – to sit in the still and breathe calm into steel and home.</p><p>She accepts that without question, too.</p><p>“There was something Thrawn said,” Hera says, and curls her hand into a fist. Chilling eyes. Burning cold. “About war.”</p><p>“I’d imagine he has a lot of opinions about war,” Rex says. “He is a Grand Admiral.”</p><p>Hera grimaces. “He said…he said war was in my blood,” she says. “He called it a forge.”</p><p>For the first time since she set foot in the room, Rex meets her eyes. There’s a depth of understanding to his gaze. “I know the feeling,” he says. A corner of his mouth turns up in a tired smile, and she remembers: bred to fight, born to die.</p><p>“Why are you here?” Hera blurts. “Why do you keep fighting?”</p><p>It startles him silent for a breath. Rex frowns. “For the Rebellion?” he asks.</p><p>“At all,” she says. “I know you believe in what we’re doing, and so do I. I just wonder sometimes—”</p><p>The words stick in her throat.</p><p>“Who you are without the war,” Rex finishes gently.</p><p>It fills her chest in a rush: finally, words for the ragged ache. Finally, words she couldn’t say. Hera drives her fingernails into her palm and breathes. One. And in. Two. And out. It’s something she taught Kanan and something he, in his own way, reminds her of now.</p><p>“When I close my eyes, all I see is fire,” Hera says, once she has her voice back.</p><p>As long as she can remember, she’s been burning.</p><p>Rex tilts his head at her. His gaze flicks to the board. The units. The troopers. His brothers. Gone: swallowed up by the same inferno that threatens to consume her now.</p><p>“We’re not so different, you and I,” he says, but it doesn’t sound like he finds comfort in it, or like he expects her to. His words bleed a deep grief. He reaches for the board and passes his hand through the figures there, grasping at their ghosts, then lets his palm come to rest in the battle’s center. It covers a clone platoon.</p><p>For a long moment, he holds.</p><p>“This was Umbara,” he says, and doesn’t look at her.</p><p>“A Republic defeat?”</p><p>“A victory,” he says. His voice cracks. His fingers spasm on the board. He draws them back as if he’s been burned. “Or so they told me.”</p><p>Some wounds cut deeper than others. Some you can’t see. Hera lets him gather himself: lets him remember how to breathe.</p><p>“Fives,” he says, and chuffs a laugh. There’s some mirth to it. Just a hint. “Fives was my brother. He was on Umbara with me. After that campaign, whenever he was with Torrent Company, we’d talk.”</p><p>He stops. Hera waits a beat. “About what you’d do when the war ended,” she says, like a question, or an invitation, or a comfort. Continue, if you want. Quiet, if you need.</p><p>“Yeah,” Rex croaks. “Thing is, I don’t think either of us ever thought we’d live to see it. And now I’m here, and he’s not, and there’s another war to fight.”</p><p>He swipes his hand over a sensor; the holo-map vanishes. Rex takes a shuddery breath and retrieves his helmet from the floor. He turns it over in his hands twice, then sets it on the table.</p><p>“Thrawn’s right,” he says, and turns to her. “The war is a forge. But who we become in it: that’s up to us.”</p><p>Fire, in her father’s eyes. Fire, swallowing her mother whole. Fire, searing the sky. Fire, seething beneath her skin, pulsing in her chest, pounding with her blood. Every breath she breathes and every choice she makes tempers her. <em>How we fight is just as important as why</em>, she tells Ezra and Sabine, and sees belief reflected in their eyes.</p><p>One. And in. Two. And out.</p><p>“And when it’s over?” she asks quietly. <em>When I no longer burn?</em></p><p>Rex settles a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know who we are without the war, Hera,” he says. “But if we survive, maybe we’ll have the chance to figure it out.”</p><p>Hera lifts her chin. “We will,” she says, and feels the truth surge in her chest. Kanan’s calm is there alongside it. “Both of us.”</p><p>Rex’s smile is soft, but it shines from his eyes. “I hope so,” he says, and shifts to stand. “Come on. We should both be getting some rest.”</p><p>The path back to her bunk is easier to tread than the one she took away from it. Hera pauses in the doorway. Kanan’s on the bed with his back to her; one arm is curled beneath his head. His breaths are even. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think he was asleep.</p><p>But she does know better. She always has.</p><p>Hera folds her arms across her chest. “You’re gonna have to do better than that, love,” she says, and is rewarded with a pitiful groan.</p><p>“Hera,” Kanan complains, without moving a muscle, “I was sleeping.”</p><p>Her heart sings, around him. It’s not something she’s ever asked him to explain. Maybe she never will. “Sure you were,” she says, and moves to change her mechanic’s smock for sleepwear. He holds out an arm at her approach. She settles in beside him.</p><p>“You find what you were looking for out there?” he asks, a warm breath on her ear.</p><p>Hera presses back into his embrace. He rests his chin on her shoulder and whispers a kiss to her cheek. “I think so,” she murmurs. “For now.”</p><p>“If you need to talk, you know I’m here.”</p><p>“You always have been.”</p><p>Kanan brushes another kiss to her temple. “Ask,” he says, and she’d question how he knows, but it’s Kanan.</p><p>When it comes to her, always knows.</p><p> “After the war,” she says, “where are you going to go?”</p><p>Warmth swells in her chest, that corner of her heart where Kanan has etched his name. “Wherever you are,” he returns. “Where do you think?”</p><p>Laughter bubbles from her, light and free. “Just checking, love,” she says. “You understand.”</p><p>He hums his agreement. “Rest,” he says, and she feels a wave of cool calm press at the edge of her mind: there to sink into, there to sooth. Hera lets it wash over her.</p><p>When she closes her eyes, there’s no more fire. When she closes her eyes, there’s only Kanan’s smile.</p><p>--</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm <a href="jate-kara.tumblr.com">jate-kara</a> over on tumblr!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>